Today we have a pleasant and exceedingly rare surprise: a major media
outlet noting that the very behavior which the U.S. Government and all
Serious People are now righteously condemning is behavior in which the
U.S. itself routinely engages. From The Los Angeles Times Editorial Page, entitled “Iran’s plot — and a U.S. double standard?”:

But wait a minute. Two weeks ago, the United States assassinated one of its enemies in Yemen, on Yemeni soil. If the U.S. believes it has the right to assassinate enemies like Anwar
Awlaki anywhere in the world in the name of a “war on terror” that has
no geographical limitation, how can it then argue that other nations
don’t have a similar right to track down their enemies and kill them
wherever they’re found?

It’s true that the assassination of Awlaki was carried out with the
cooperation of the government of Yemen. That makes a difference. But
would the U.S. have hesitated to kill him if Yemen had not approved?
Remember: There was no cooperation from the Pakistani government when
Osama bin Laden was killed in May.

It’s also true that there’s a big difference between an Al Qaeda
operative who, according to U.S. officials, had been deeply involved in
planning terrorist activities, and a duly credited ambassador of a
sovereign country. Still, the fact remains that all nations ought to
think long and hard before gunning down their enemies in other
countries.

As the United States continues down the path of state-sponsored assassination far from the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, all sorts of tricky moral questions are likely to arise. But this much is clear: The
world is unlikely to accept that the United States has a right to
behave as it wishes without accountability all around the globe and that
other nations do not.